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wooferhound writes with news that a federal judge has overturned part of Chicago's firearm laws. From CNN: "A federal judge ruled Monday that Chicago's ban on virtually all sales and transfers of firearms is unconstitutional. 'The stark reality facing the City each year is thousands of shooting victims and hundreds of murders committed with a gun. But on the other side of this case is another feature of government: certain fundamental rights are protected by the Constitution, put outside government's reach, including the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense under the Second Amendment,' wrote U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang."
The Chicago Tribune notes: "The ruling also would make it legal for individuals to transfer ownership of a firearm as a gift or through a private sale as long as the recipient was at least 18 and had a firearm owner's identification card." The ruling doesn't change anything yet: the ruling's effect was delayed to give the city time to appeal.

It seems that firearm ownership rights are the only Constitutional issue that this Supreme Court intends on correctly dealing with. At least it's a start - our other rights emanate from the 2nd Amendment.

It boggles my mind why people still think gun control will "fix" crime. Crime is a socioeconomic problem. Why is there so much crime? It's not because there are guns. It's because of the way our society, economy and culture are setup. Nothing will change until you address the root underlying causes of crime, and offer people alternatives/programs that they are willing to accept.

Actually, there isn't evidence because the CDC isn't allowed to collect data on that anymore thanks to heavy lobbying from the NRA. When they did find a link between guns and gun injuries in the home, their funding was removed.

If I recall correctly stat say that the US is #3 in gun deaths in developed countries.. What is funny about that is if you take the 3 cities with the strongest anti Gun laws (Washington DC, New York City, and Chicago) and made them their own country, they would be #4 on the list and the rest of the US would drop down to something like #20 or lower on the list..

It is not the legal gun owners in these cities murdering each other. The truth is most of these deaths are black on black murders done with illegal guns. As long as we are discouraged from saying this and do not address the real problems in these communities, stronger gun laws won't fix anything.

. The truth is most of these deaths are black on black murders done with illegal guns..

The truth is most of the deaths are gang murders. Black gangs, Hispanic/Latino gangs, and yes White gangs/motorcylce clubs etc.
Its gang activity. Whether it's Jesse James and his gangs back in the day, or Al Capone and his ilk, or the bloods and crips and latin kings today its mostly gang activity. Trying to cast this on one race of people when its obvious that this is not the case is...well.. short sighted to say the least.

What is funny about that is if you take the 3 cities with the strongest anti Gun laws (Washington DC, New York City, and Chicago) and made them their own country, they would be #4 on the list and the rest of the US would drop down to something like #20 or lower on the list.

I don't know about these exact figures, but Mike Huckabee said something remarkably similar and PolitiFact [politifact.com] took him to task for being full of it. So I for one would be interested to see the actual numbers behind your claims.

By that line of reasoning, if you take all a person's possessions you remove any incentive a criminal would have to steal it. Which obviously proves that taking everyone's possessions is the only sane way to eliminate theft.

The people most opposed to gun control are the ones who are also most opposed to fixing the underlying problems, so what are we supposed to do?

Yeah hardly. You know that old adage, "you can lead a horse to water but you can't force them to swim." Right, it's the same thing with fixing those "underlying social problems." Especially in the highest crime areas where it's black youth, and the lack of a strong father figure which gives young boys no direction in life. The ones that climb above that are a small minority. Of course to fix the problem, you need to get the entire community itself to grow the fsk up.

And of course before someone thinks that I'm a blind racist or something, we see the same problem in Canada with natives. And funny enough, it's the same damned problem, with the same underlying social issues, contributing to the same circle. Funny that. This isn't rocket surgery, not by a long shot. And race baiters, and race enablers are the primary cause of this. Followed by the belief that "they're owed something."

The Supreme Court hasn't even heard this case - it was decided by a federal judge. And if it does get to the Supreme Court they most likely will choose not hear it since there is nothing (legally) controversial about the ruling as it stands.

No, the wild west was open carry. Open carry seems provocative. The primary point of most states' concealed carry laws is that your gun must remain concealed at all times. Flashing or suggesting you carry can cost your license, and is assault if it can be construed as a threat - which is an automatic 10 year sentence in some states.

The best part of concealed carry is herd immunity - you can benefit from other's carrying and the deterrent effect that has. It's no coincidence that all but one mass shooting in the past few decades happened in a "gun free zone" of some sort (and the one exception was likely a political assassination with collateral damage, not a random shooting).

"Most states" says the person who clearly knows very little about states' firearms laws. Open carry is legal throughout most of the US [opencarry.org], in many (but not most) cases predicated on having a concealed carry license/permit.

This is why it's important to restore the Constitution as much as possible and enable "Constitutional carry" as Vermont has always had and Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas and Wyoming have resumed. If you're not a criminal, you can carry whatever/however you want, no permission slip required.

Upon entering town, you surrendered your weapons to the sherriff who would hold the weapon until you left town. If you didn't surrender your weapon, the sherriff would -- and did -- take it from your cold dead hands. The most famous incident was the Shootout at the OK Corral [wikipedia.org].

Back then, it was considered "common sense" to not carry a gun around in civilization.

Actually the so-called "wild west" was sometimes open carry, and sometimes not. And that shootout was down the street from the OK Corral. Per your own reference, guns were prohibited in town by local ordinance enacted while Wyatt Earp was serving as Pima County deputy sheriff.

I will defend your right to own guns but the concealed carry laws that all the 2nd Amendment defenders seem to favor are just a bit out there IMO. We tried that during the Dodge City and the wild west days and abandoned it sometime around 1900.

Your understanding of the 'wild west' is clearly limited to what you see in the movies.

Of course, most who oppose concealed carry forget that open carry is legal in many a state as well... and given the choice between someone being able to legally carry concealed vs open... which do you think most would prefer?

Sure... many would say "at least if I can see the gun I know it's there and who to avoid"... to which I'd say "So? If you live your life in such terror of not knowing who might be carrying a weapon and who might not be... not only are your priorities off, but you really need to see help with your anxiety issues".

Of course the broader thing is people associating a piece of metal & wood with evil... rather than understanding it is only a tool and it is the user who is the committer of such acts... and if sufficiently dedicated doesn't need a firearm.

I think you'll find that the murder rate (RATE - not total which was much lower) was actually lower during the "wild" west than it is today.

The reality is that the the "wild" west is mostly an invention of the mid-20th century movie industry that took a handful of historical events and portrayed it such that people think that it was completely normal for the town to be shot up.

Concealed carry is now the norm in more than 80% of the United States, and in every case, every case without exception, violent crime has either decreased or remained the same after concealed carry laws went into effect. There is nothing "out there" about it.

If you say the murder rate would be decreasing even without carry, a notion I agree with, then clearly you're saying that carrying DOES NOT negatively contribute to the murder rate... to which I'd say what POSSIBLE justification could you have for having a problem with carrying? Are we really going to ban things for no other reason than they seem dangerous? 'cause I'll tell ya, them baseball bats I see on the fields during the summer, them things sure look dangerous to me, we'd better ban them too... oh, and let's not even talk about your table saws or claw hammers or motor vehicles!

If the murder rate is going down DESPITE carrying, then just leave carrying alone. Doesn't that simply make logical sense to you?

Wow you're pretty damn ignorant aren't you. Contrary to Hollywood unreality and the pulp westerns put out by book publishing companies at the time that were sensationalized to, and this part is key, sell books, the Wild West was not wild because people were being gunned down like rabid dogs left and right. In point of fact, they were safer from being shot than most medium to large cities today.

As for your twelve years of EMT work, were you even in a city where at least 30% of the of age law abiding populace owned guns? Somehow I seriously fucking doubt it. Seeing as less than 10% of mexican crime guns come from Non-governmental US sources, what in the nine hells do you fucking think that banning guns would do in the US given our porous borders. We can't even keep things as large as containers of people slipping through.

Policy departments want laws that allow them to shoot people they think are holding a gun. They don't want to wait untill a suspect has pointed a gun. They don't want to have to provide evidense that the person was going to shoot.

Guns haven't been necessary to defend rights since the war of independence...

Tell that to a black man in Mississippi circa 1964. There are a few that might tell you how the only thing that stood between their home and family, and a dozen angry klansmen with torches, was a 12ga shotgun and the will to use it. Guns in the hands of good people have been used to defend the right to free speech, the right to assemble, and the right to vote, throughout the 20th century.

Racism is the foundation of gun control in America. Only someone ignorant of history would dispute that. The same thing goes for drug policy, but that's another conversation.

A simple compromise is the individual should be allowed to own the same arms that are standard issue to the army infantry. This would mean that M-16/AR-15 should be legal but not fully automatic versions (as infantry soldiers do not get full auto M-16s). So no tanks nor nukes nor RPGs etc.

An armed citizenry is of no consequence, because the weapons controlled by the police+military are so much more powerful. It's like bringing a knife to a gunfight, but up a notch.

Lol, you haven't been paying attention for the last decade, have you? People living in mud huts with a firearm ownership rate considerably lower than the US have stymied the biggest, most expensive military on the planet. That's when the fight is half the world away, where you can easily brainwash the soldiers into thinking of the

"10 U.S. Code 311 - Militia: composition and classes
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.(b) The classes of the militia are—(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

Well regulated, in the parlance of the times, meant that they would show up with x amount of shot, powder, a weapon to use same, change of socks, etc. It was used the same way "regulator" is used as a clock trademark. It didn't mean bossed around; it meant consistently supplied and prepared. This is explicitly laid out in legislation from the time. The point of the 2nd being made was that people required the freedom to keep an bear arms if they were to form up in a well prepared and supplied manner.

We're still pretty well regulated in that sense. A very large number of US citizens could show up with a rifle and cartridges for same if called upon to do so. Be quite a few handguns, too, and a wide assortment of other weapons that aren't classed as firearms at all. But that's the 2nd for you: arms. Not just firearms, but arms.

Overthrowing an oppressive government (what the second amendment is about) requires modern military hardware. In this age, that means tanks, RPGs and military aircraft. When the Supreme Court rules that private ownership of these must be allowed then I will believe that it is handling the Second Amendment "correctly".

Your state militia has everything it needs in order to overthrow an oppressive government. If the Federal government tried to overstep its bounds, and the states stood up for their rights, they would be able to match the federal government with nearly equivalent hardware (I do realize most National Guard units are the last units to be upgraded to the latest and greatest hardware).

That being said - I believe that the second amendment is referring specifically to an individual's rights. And even if it is no

The Constitution also doesn't state that the government has the power to force citizens to purchase unwanted health insurance from private entities, but it seems that this Court doesn't believe the States or the people reserve that power.

That's another silly statement. It's not "tilted" - most ideologically-weighted cases come down 5-4, and do not always swing one way or the other. Roberts was derided by the Left as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, yet he twisted himself into a pretzel justifying his opinion that Obamacare is constitutional.

Well, that's silly. They ruled that the "Defense of Marriage Act"'s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional...

And a few short months later, that same court has said that Utah may continue (pending the appeals process) to discriminate against same sex couples. Nice try. This is a shamelessly tilted court, especially when you take the social issues off the scales.

You aren't reading what the court says. They very clearly prefer for society to make a determination on the issue rather than legislate it one way or the other. They won't be making a definitive ruling on the subject of gay marriage anytime soon. They'll let the states deal with it except issues where there's conflict between one state and another, or conflict between state's rights and federal law (as was the case with DOMA).

Another study just came out showing that increased gun ownership actually lowers the murder rate and lower gun ownership does the opposite. We have multiple points of confirmation and there are a few skeptical politicians that are starting to come around.

The old truism is confirmed. Outlaw guns and only the outlaws will have them.

Does Chicago have a violence problem? Yes. Gun bans are not the solution.

Another study just came out showing that increased gun ownership actually lowers the murder rate and lower gun ownership does the opposite. We have multiple points of confirmation and there are a few skeptical politicians that are starting to come around.

The old truism is confirmed. Outlaw guns and only the outlaws will have them.

Does Chicago have a violence problem? Yes. Gun bans are not the solution.

If you'd like me to link you to summaries or commentary then I can do that though appreciate those will be from blogs and so forth. If you want to read the actual study you'll have to get it from those fellows.

If you want to save yourself some time, here is a quote:

""It was also found that assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level.""

So there you go. Why are we fighting about this issue?

The gun people want to keep their guns. Why are the anti gun people fighting them? They say it is to save lives. But that might be a mistake on their part.

For the sake argument, assuming these laws don't reduce murder, do we still want to ban guns?

It just seems so needlessly confrontational. Leave people alone. If they want to carry guns let them do so. Does that mean every so often a crazy person will kill some people with such a weapon? Possibly but they're crazy and honestly could probably find something to do their deed. Remember, the 9/11 hijackers killed over 3000 people with a collection of box cutters.

If you have a will to kill then you really don't need a gun. And I'll be honest... I like the idea of NORMAL non-criminal people that aren't crazy having access to guns. I think that's a good thing. I think society is most secure when the most reasonable people have the trump card on violence.

My neighbors are mostly good people. If things get crazy the idea of us all popping up with a gun seems like a good check against anarchy.

Also... zombies can't use guns... so take that zombie uprising. The robot uprising might be more of a problem. After all those bastards can use guns.

See, when you take guns away from normal people, you make gun violence SAFE for criminals. They wave their gun around without fear of getting shot.

That is the result.

Is that what you want?

Do you think being in a gang in Chicago is safe? Do you really think an average joe is going to pull a gun on a gang member on the south side of Chicago? Do you know how gangs work? You kill one of them, they come and kill someone from your gang. Not in a gang? Even better, they just come kill you. "Normal" people aren't going to become RoboCop and stand up to criminals, that's suicide.

There is crime in Chicago not because criminals feel like they can act with impunity, but because so many people know n

As to normal people standing up to criminals, they do it all the time and always have. I have hundreds of examples just in the last couple years of totally normal people standing up to men with guns and winning.

Of course... they had guns themselves.

Criminals are mostly cowards just like most people. But the man that stands up to a criminal and risks his life is not a coward and in any give crowd you'll find a few people that aren't cowards.

a 3d printed METAL gun... the machine used to make the gun was not cheap. But in 20 years it will be... the plastic guns already work though they are a little unreliable. The metal ones... who could tell the difference?

The banning argument is dead. From the 3d printing alone it is dead. Indifferent to the statistics, the politics, and the ideology.

Laws like this target gun owners who follow the law. The problem is that most of the violence is perpetrated by people who could not buy a gun legally anyway. There are some cases of legally owned guns being used illegally but that is not the norm. This law will do nothing to curb the illegal gun trade.

Local laws like this have little or no effect except moving the legal gun dealers and the jobs out of the jurisdiction. All gun buyers who would normally do business in Chicago will do is drive outside the city and buy their guns. The result will be the same.

Banning the sale of a legal product that is protected by the constitution will be almost impossible. When a higher court refuses to hear the case the politicians can say "At least we tried". This is a PR stunt as they just want to look like they are doing something even when they know it will not work. What a waste of time and money that could be better used elsewhere.

Banning the sale of a legal product that is protected by the constitution will be almost impossible. When a higher court refuses to hear the case the politicians can say "At least we tried". This is a PR stunt as they just want to look like they are doing something even when they know it will not work. What a waste of time and money that could be better used elsewhere.

Tell me about it. I live in Colorado where the politicians pandered to a vocal constituency and passed a bunch of unenforceable laws in response to the Aurora theater shootings. In spite of these laws and laws already on the books a paroled felon was able to acquire a gun and use it to kill two people. The only difference the new laws made was to make it more difficult for law abiding citizens to buy or sell guns. And, as you predicted, all we heard from the politicians was, "At least we tried". Sadly, this will probably be followed by calls for even more controls that also won't work.

America is not like Europe. If strict gun laws worked then you'd expect Chicago's gun crime to be low instead of among the highest in the nation. All the criminals in Chicago have guns, irrespective of what the law says. The only people affected by these laws are law abiding citizens who may want to protect themselves. Banning guns would make us all safer if you could ban them from everyone, everywhere.

Gun laws vary quite a bit in Europe, and they also have a tradition of applying common sense and simply ignoring technical infractions where no one is hurt (again, this varies widely, but is correct in many areas.)

Gun laws do not make Europe safer, cultures which do not approve of violence make Europe safer. The US was once just as safe (and that was back before 'gun control' was an issue, when children routinely carried their rifle with them to school.) What has changed has nothing to do with weapons, it has to do with our attitudes towards violence.

Really sad that the links have few details, and more than 1.5 hours later, no one's posted anything more.

The decision text is available here [scribd.com]. The decision is by Judge Edmond Chang [wikipedia.org], appointed in 2010 by Obama to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The case name is Illinois Association of Firearm Retailers v. City of Chicago (formerly known as Benson v. City of Chicago).

This link [nraila.org] says that the lawsuit challenges five aspects of Chicago's law:

Long answer: While legally it's "no" the truth is that minors have significantly less rights than adults. It's even worse than that since in America you're no longer considered a minor when you turn 18 or 19 depending on the state, but you can't drink or own a pistol until you're 21.

There are several cases where US schools have punished students for doing things which aren't illegal while off school grounds. Student's have essentially no rights while they are on school grounds. They can be searched without any justification. They're punished if they have something that even like a weapon [techdirt.com]. Even worse, school is compulsory, so it's not like any of this is opt out.

Fortunately where I used to live I was empowered with freedoms and I got my first gun at about age 8 or 10. I learned responsible gun safety and marksmanship at a good age and my parents kept it for me so that I was only allowed to use it under supervision.

2 or 3 decades later after continuous gun ownership I still haven't shot any people or had any firearms accidents resulting in human injury. Additionally I retain the ability to secure meat for food and the ability to defend my home and family against

MADD is a laughable remnant of yesteryear puritanism. They're nothing more than the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in a different dress. Lightner herself left the group not long after it started because they just tilted straight into prohibitionism.

McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 3025 (2010), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that determined whether the Second Amendment applies to the individual states. The Court held that the right of an individual to "keep and bear arms" protected by the Second Amendment is incorporated by the Due Process Clause of the

First, yes, let's get this discusson off of slashdot. It is sad when articles on robotics get 60 comments total, and firearms flamewars get to 500 in a few hours. But..

> no one believes, rationally, that Americans should be allowed to own/operate any kind of weaponry without limit.

What do you think the founders believed? In the early revolutionary period, the US had no navy. They issued letters of marque to privately owned, armed ships. As in: private individuals owned war ships.

I'd say because "gun control" tends to be a a polarizing topic amongst nerds. Far more people tend to have strong opinions on the issue (either for OR against) than the general populace, so hence most gun control topics get a lot of support here.

Remember that guns are indeed technology, and the legal situation around the restriction and sale of a technology is of great interest to technophiles.

The definition 'well regulated militia' is irrelevant. The right is of 'the people'. If they wanted the right to be of 'the militia' they would have written that. Clearly they knew the word, having just used it.

Some nerds like guns. Some nerds REALLY like guns. In fact, some nerds are defined by the fact that they play a ton of games that revolve around, pretty much, guns...
So, guns themselves aren't "anti-nerd."

How many people in the USA died at the wrong end of a fully automatic assault rifle?

So few that it is statistically insignificant. The exact number is less than 100

I'll tell you why there are so few deaths from fully automatic assault rifles: gun control works.

Really? There are about 100 million rifles in the US with AR15 "assault rifles" accounting for around 5 million of these. In 2012 rifles of any sort were used to kill 348 people. That means the percentage of rifles used in a murder is 0.000384%. More people were killed from hands and feet then were killed by rifles of any sort last year. And you are going to tell me that an assault weapon ban is anything but propaganda?

If you want to talk about gun control, handguns account for virtually all murders with a firearm. Worrying about any other type of firearm is simply a waste of time.

I'm not even a gun advocate and i know the difference between fully automatic, semi automatic, machine gun, assault weapon and a hunting rifle.AR15 is a hunting rifle that looks more deadly.Most gun related deaths are from pistols. They account for something like 95% of all gun related deaths.Most gun related deaths are from illegal guns. There is only a small fraction of murders committed by their legal gun owners. Most gun related homicides are gang and drug related.

Actually what happened is that in 1986 Congress closed the machine gun registry with the Hughes Amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act.

It was supposed to be a poison pill to defeat FOPA but the NRA supported the bill anyway (FOPA was full of good stuff otherwise) and said they'd challenge the Hughes Amendment later on constitutional grounds since assault rifles and submachine guns can be considered militia weaponry and therefore protected by the 2nd Amendment as the Supreme Court has come to underst

The reason so few crimes are committed with them is because we have regulated them out of common use. It is very difficult to buy one.

You missed the GP's point with respect to "assault weapon" bans. The 5 million or so AR-15s are NOT fully automatic, "assault weapons" are a political fiction based on cosmetics not fullauto capability. Put a 5 round magazine into an AR-15 and it is functionally identical to various popular semiauto small game and target rifles that have detachable magazines. Put a 30 round magazine into one of these small game and target rifles and they are functionally identical to the gun banner's poster child of crime, the AR-15.

The point being that there are FAR more than 5 million semiauto rifles with detachable magazines AND there were only 348 people killed with rifles of any kind in 2012 out of a population of 312 million. The GP's point about "assault weapon" bans stand.

I suspect that the most important reason is the same reason why most gun crimes are committed with handguns...rifles of any sort are big, bulky, unwieldy, and heavy. So allowing automatic rifles would likely not make much difference.

Fully automatic machine pistols though might increase the danger, though I suspect in many cases it would just mean that the person would zip through their magazine that much faster and then be stuck with no ammo. It might actually make things safer since inept users would be more likely to use up the whole magazine in one (likely inaccurate) burst.

Clearly, having a full auto rifle would help the sick person achieve his goals more efficiently.

I'll tell you why there are so few deaths from fully automatic assault rifles: gun control works.

As someone who deals with statistics as his day job (AI research: extracting signal from noise), I find the question of gun control fascinating.

Ideally, there should be an evidence-based answer that one can use as a basis of opinion. We have an enormous amount of evidence and analysis from which to draw out conclusions, so the answer should be obvious.

Is it?

Actually, it is. There is a clear and unambiguous answer to the issue of gun control, an answer based on evidence and when implemented would minimize so

you misunderstand how the Constitution works. it is NOT a list of our rights, and thus your argument is invalid. it is a list of what the government is allowed to do, and those not listed are delegated to the states and/or the people. the Bill of Rights is extra protection against government and specifically lays out what they MUST NEVER do.

the right to bear arms is not a Constitutional right, it is a Natural right Constitutionally protected.

That's akin to saying that the constitution allows for free speech, but not for the pre-requisite air.

The thing is, it doesn't, at least not in the opinions of many people. All those folks who like to blather on about negative rights rarely bring up the fact that, without strong and well-enforced environmental regulation, the air we breath, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the land upon which we live can be contaminated to the point that it will not sustain healthy life, and all of that is okay because air, water, food, shelter, and health don't fall into the category of negative rights, but are instead positive rights that restrict (often unfairly, in these people's minds) the rights of others.

In other words, I'm talking about the type of people who like to talk about natural rights like freedom of speech, worship, ownership, but hate the idea of government restrictions on what they do with their land, their air, or their water, even those these are all commons that are shared with the community at large.

A person who both supports natural and negative rights but sees strong environmental protections as important to protect those rights is a rare person, indeed.

Actually, negative rights work just fine to protect those things by fining and jailing the shit out of those who produce waste which lead to health effects off their lands. Of course that requires a healthy court system(we don't have one) and a populace with a basic understanding of said system and the nature of negative rights which requires a non-corrupt education system(we don't have one) and a series of basic civics classes.

NOT a solution. You just end up with really aggressive HOAs which are mini-governments. In some cases HOAs have trampled on rights that are considered free speech outside their domain. Most famously there was the case of a veteran who put a flag on a pole in his front yard, in violation of HOA policy. In that case, there was so much outrage against the HOA that they made an exception and backed down. In most cases however, residents in HOA communities that chafe under the rules have to grin and bear it

Repeal what is considered an inalienable right and you no longer have inalienable right... If you repel the second then what is to stop them from doing it to 1-27 as well. Remember this is one of the original bill of rights, not just an amendment that was added later. l

I lived in an area in new mexico where it could take two to three hours for a sheriff to get out to the house. How would I defend myself without a firearm? How would I stop a bear attack? If you were a single woman of 120 pounds recently removed from an abusive relationship with 250 pound drunk that walks right over a court order how do you defend yourself? How does a old woman of 80 years protect her home from two grown men kicking in her door for her painkillers? If guns are not needed why do the p

Recently Iceland recorded it's *FIRST* police shooting resulting in death, ever. An Icelander could say the same thing about Canada (or most other countries). And, in case you're interested, the rate of gun ownership in Iceland is HIGHER than in the U.S. Link to BBC if you don't believe me:

Handguns are typically legitimately used for self defense. Rifles and shotguns are typically used for hunting. People in Alaska and similar parts of Canada will frequently carry a handgun due to the danger from bears or various types. On the other hand, I don't know of any duck hunters who also carry a pistol while hunting. It all depends on what perils you're worried about. Around here (Colorado) deer hunters will frequently also carry a pistol since a mountain lion may think you're just being helpful by carving up you're deer when you thought you were field dressing him.

What scares me most about the movement to have some sort of mental health check required for gun ownership is that I fear it will lead to a Catch-22 world. One where you can only own a gun if you're not crazy but you are assumed to be crazy if you want to own a gun.